, and he said that it is untanble to not cut them because they are driving the budget deficit, and, you know, the whole entitlement issues, the real core of the problem, the taxing issue, yes, the pyrotechnics, and its -- there's the struggle between the republican and democratic view, but all the numbers people know that it's the entitlement issue so if there's a fix, trajectory to make it somehow stable, that would be -- that's the relation. uh-oh, you have something from the book. >> your books are all ultimately about power, how it's used, squandered, built, and so the sub text of the events that you write about is how life works, how washington works. my favorite sentence in "the price of politics" is, "when you need friends, it's too late to make them." what have you learned about washington and life from the grand bargain? what is the hundred-year lesson from how that unraveled? >> well, you mean last year? what happened last year? well, that they found a way to postpone everything, and, again, they can postpone lots of the problems, but postponement is the theme. the cliche, "ki
